Laptops ahoy!

My birthday is in a few days, but we celebrated it a bit early. My dad got me a laptop! Since it comes with a wireless nic, I can use it on the same internet connection as my computer, which is awesome.

Now, the question is, what do you do with a laptop? Well, I have some answers. I am a writer, but I have terrible handwriting and I write very slowly. I type much faster then I write, close to how fast I think. So! a laptop is perfect, because anytime I want, I can plop down and bang out a few chapters, or put down my thoughts. It is great!

Just gotta be careful I don't drop it. Yikes! Don't want to jinx myself!

Friedship: What is it?

What makes someone a friend? No, seriously, give it some thought. I want no platitudes, or trite answers.

My current life situation has caused me to ask this question. It would seem I have come to a place in my life that I have been in many times. I have no friends. It isn't half as sad as it seems, especially when you consider that, as I have said above, I don't really know what a friend is.

After giving it much thought, and talking it over with my good friend Don, I have decided that I actually do have some friends. It is jut that my definition of friend is different from the reality. So, I have to ask myself, what is a friend, really? When you strip away the emotion of a relationship, what are you left with?

I am a very logical person, and though I accept emotion as real, I don't think it should define reality. There is emotion and then there is reality, and they do not necessarily always agree (I am banging on my keyboard, because it isn't typing all of the letters; that is, the window I am typing into is not capturing all of the letters I type; this is very irritating, as you can imagine).

Back to the question of a friend: Is a friend always just an emotional connection? Can there be logical reasons for being friends? I have always felt (not known, or even thought) that a friend is someone you have an emotional connection to, and that is it. They are someone to be around who is rewarding emotionally. This is why, when someone becomes emotionally unrewarding, I generally let them go. Now, while this may seem heartless, it is often the healthier thing to do.

My friend Blair posits a different understandng of friendship: A friend is an ally, someone who will fight with you against yor mutual enemies. Now, that mutual enemy could be as pedestrian as boredom, or the heat, but it is the enemy that is essential. This may explain why my friendship with Blair has been rocky at times.

Others have led me to understand that people bond together out of a herd instinct. Now, whether you believe that or not, humans are not herd animals. We are predators. It is why our eyes face forward. A pack instinct I could understand better. A group of predators, hungry and lurking. But this leads us back into Blair's belief: The enemies of a group of predators are boredom, hunger, and other predators.

None of that explains the emotional context, however. Why do people like eachother, and decide to share lives together? Why do we need other people? I will post on this more, later.

Get your guns!

The Supreme Court just put out a decision, their first in two centuries concerning the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment is the one that says "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." The Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, has said that law-abiding citizens of the United States of America have a right to own and have guns in their homes for the purposes of self-defense.

The case came out of an appeal filed by a man living in Washington, D. C. Washington, D. C. probably has the most restrictive gun laws in all of America (remarkably, they also have one of the highest crime rates in America, despite having such restrictive gun laws). The man, a guard who lived in the city, requested a permit to own and have a handgun in his home. His petition was rejected, and he appealed the decision. The Court of Appeals agreed with him, and said the city had to give him a permit to own a gun. I am unclear on the other details, however.

What it comes down to is, those cities that have similar, restrictive gun laws, are going to have to relax their restrictions. People in the United States of America have a right to defend themselves and to own guns in their own homes. Deal with it.

Go here to view the story.